Bubba and the Ten Little Loonies

by C. L. Bevill

  “Not unless she can get them same lawyers who represented O.J. Simpson, I reckon not.”

  Blake glanced around. “That little boy, Brownie, isn’t about, is he? I heard all about him.”

  “Boy’s in Louisiana,” Bubba said, “but he and his family are coming for the wedding.” Bubba’s cousin, Fudge, his wife, Virtna, and baby Cookie, would be coming for a few days before the wedding and then scooting back to Monroe because Brownie was in school. Brownie had sworn that he would not bring any weapons of mass destruction, and supposedly the school had been gleeful to be rid of him for even a brief period of time.

  “Lately, I’ve heard rumors about how he managed to get the best of two fellas who tried to kidnap him,” Blake said. “He’s a right pistol.”

  “Oh, don’t say that,” Bubba said. “You might give the boy an idea. Kid’s got enough ideas without adding firearms to the equation.”

  “Well, then I expect you’re a busy man these days, with impending nuptials and all.”

  “Word gets around, I suspect,” Bubba offered. Was he supposed to invite Blake Landry, too? The reality was that he didn’t know if he was supposed to invite anyone. There had been rampant discussion about the number of people coming to the wedding and to the reception. Apparently, every invitee was to be vetted by Miz Demetrice, Celestine Gray, and Peyton.

  “Even out to Dogley, we’ve heard about the big event,” Blake said. “I’m somewhat concerned about David Beathard, and that’s why I’m here.”

  “David,” Bubba repeated. It wasn’t a question. He himself was somewhat concerned about David. “I saw him this morning. He wasn’t happy.”

  Blake shook his head. “I can’t go into details about Mr. Beathard, as I’m his social worker and therapist, but I wonder if there’s anything you can tell me about him that might help.”

  “He’s gone Sherlock.” Bubba supposed that Sherlock Holmes was better than the Purple Singapore Sling persona and the dread pirate, Bad Black Dog McGee. But there had also been a psychiatrist and possibly a first lady, too. However, this was the first time Bubba had been required to take on a persona, as well.

  Blake nodded. “Another manifestation of his disorder.”

  “Don’t seem like a real disorder like that gal Sybil, do it?”

  “That’s dissociative identity disorder,” Blake said. “It’s characterized by two or more distinctive personalities. The personality controls the person to the extent that the original might have a gap in memory during the time another personality is in control. Sometimes it’s called ‘missing time.’” He shook his head. “It’s actually very rare. Authors love it a little too much.”

  Bubba thought about it. “David doesn’t really do that. He remembers. Sometimes he talks about himself in the third person.”

  Blake shrugged. “Again, I can’t talk about specifics.”

  “Obviously, something’s bothering him,” Bubba said. “Otherwise he would stay as plain ol’ David Beathard.” Something itched at the back of Bubba’s neck. He reached up with a hand and scratched it. Alas, it was a metaphorical itch. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “David hasn’t been back to the institute since Wednesday,” Blake said. “He’s there voluntarily, of course, and I’ve been in contact with his family. You have no idea how glad I am to hear that you saw him this morning. I had a vision of that little car in a deep ditch somewhere.”

  “Healthy, no blood dripping, and dressed in a deerstalker hat with an Inverness coat, talking with what I think is the worst British accent ever.” Bubba gestured with one hand. “That’s how a fella like that asks for help. You know that gal, Thelda?”

  “Another interesting case who lives in the halfway house now, although she’s at the hospital a great deal, too. She’s rather partial to the Pegramville area.”

  “That’s on account that the folks here are half crazy, too.” Bubba grinned wryly. “Makes us a mite more acceptin’ and all.”

  Blake studied Bubba. Bubba didn’t care for it much. He’d talked to people of the mental health care ilk before. The Army had made him speak to one of them for three weeks before he was discharged. There had been a lot of buzzwords about anger management, self-control, and self-actualization, but the man had been about as useful as a ball at a square dance.

  “I think people are a lot more accepting than they give themselves credit for,” Blake said. “Pegramville is a little canted to one side is all. That’s a good thing.” He paused. “I don’t suppose David is staying here.”

  “Do you see a Smart car with Jolly Roger wraps?”

  Blake smiled again. “He’s not in trouble. I’m just concerned.”

  “Ifin I see him, I’ll let him know.” Bubba thought about what David said. There had been murder, despicable yucky murder and the game being afoot. He hadn’t said where it was, and Bubba had assumed the Dogley Institute for Mental Well-Being was the locale of choice. Willodean had brought up the two deaths. Bubba hadn’t heard of any other deaths, per se, and if there had been murders in Pegram County, people would have been talking about it. They would have been yelling about it. Bubba would have gone deaf listening to it.

  Blake offered his hand again, and Bubba shook it. It was a nice strong grip but not too strong. A political grip. Three shakes, one firm squeeze, and then the release. He turned back toward the Pinto.

  “Say, doc,” Bubba said.

  “Oh, I’m not a doctor,” Blake said, turning back to Bubba. “I have an MSW. That’s a master’s in social work. I have some extra credentials, too, but that’s the gist of it. I get to put initials behind my name. Whoopee.”

  “You said you ain’t seen David since Wednesday,” Bubba said.

  Blake nodded.

  “That wouldn’t be the day that someone kilt hisself out there at the institute, would it?”

  The blue eyes turned solemn. “That’s right. It happened either early Wednesday or late Tuesday. Half the patients had to be medicated.” He slapped a hand over his mouth. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Mebe David’s just plumb upset and all,” Bubba said. “There’s a good chance he’ll work it out.”

  Blake nodded. He went to the Pinto and opened the door.

  “Hey, ifin you need some work on that Ford, bring it to Culpepper’s Garage,” Bubba called. “I kin rebuild a four cylinder in my sleep.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Blake said.

  As the social worker drove off, Bubba yelled, “Don’t get into a rear-end collision!”

  * * *

  Bubba went in to see his mother before he went looking for one David Beathard. He supposed that David’s disappearance couldn’t be officially reported to the police department, seeing as how David had come to see him at the lake. There wasn’t any real indication that David intended on doing himself any harm, other than becoming hot and sweaty from wearing the heavy Inverness coat.

  “Bubba!” Miz Demetrice cried happily as he entered the kitchen with Precious at heels. “Open or cash bar?”

  “Spring for beer and wine, Ma,” Bubba said and turned right back around.

  “Foreign or domestic?” Celestine asked.

  “Mix it up,” Bubba snapped.

  “Where are you going, Bubba?” Peyton called.

  “To the insane asylum! Also I feel like eting some pickles!”

  Chapter 6

  Bubba and the Dogley Institute

  and Also Some Loonies

  Saturday, April 6th

  The way to the Dogley Institute wasn’t a difficult trek, but there was only one way to go. One simply left the greater downtown area of metropolitan Pegramville and headed north. After a few miles the farms disappeared into piney forests and great thickets that people had been known to go into and never come out. Eventually, there was a left turn onto a narrow two-lane road. That road cut through a deep ravine with the Sturgis River on one side and splintering red rock cliffs on the other. He drove over a narrow bridge and wound up on the top of a deeply foreste
d mesa. Once, all the land had belonged to a distant cousin of the Snoddys who wanted to grow coffee beans, but he’d lost all his money during the Great Depression, sold the land to a developer, and moved to Argentina with his third wife, never to be heard from again. (It never failed to amuse Bubba that there was likely a line of Argentinian Snoddys who spoke Spanish and had never set foot in Texas.)

  The developer who’d purchased the land tried to parcel it out but got into a financial dilemma with his bank which caused the land to sit undeveloped for nearly thirty years. Then a medical corporation bought it for pennies on the dollar because the developer gambled his fortune away on a franchise of mink ranches. Believing that the greater Pegramville area would develop because of the Army post and the bucolic attraction of cheap land, the medical corporation built a hospital on the location in the sixties. It wasn’t the best place for a rural hospital, and it languished under different auspices for twenty years until it became a psychiatric hospital. Despite the Dogley Institute of Mental Well-Being being its fourth incarnation, it seemed to be doing well. It had been renovated, and all the employees praised its great perks. Its only failing was that it had inadvertently hired a sociopathic killer bent on revenge. However, Bubba had to admit that was water under the bridge.

  Bubba had been to the Dogley Institute before but not in a professional affiliation. He had also come hunting on the mesa with one of his uncles, who assiduously avoided the hospital and its grounds whilst they sought squirrel and white-tailed deer out of season.

  With a sigh, Bubba caught sight of his destination. It appeared as any regular hospital would. Whitewashed walls set the backdrop for a manicured lawn that spread far and away. There weren’t any fences and especially not any with concertina wire mounted on top. The parking lot was close to the front entrance, and inside a nearby gazebo, a pair of nurses smoked cigarettes and chatted affably.

  Déjà vu hit Bubba hard. He had been to Dogley to visit David Beathard in order to get his opinion as a pseudo-psychiatrist, and it was nearly the same as it had been before. At the time, David had been the only such individual that Bubba could think of to speak with. It had worked out even though David hadn’t been Psychiatrist David but had been Purple Singapore Sling (or The PSS as it had been shortened to) David.

  A handy formal sign on one side announced the name of the facility. Bubba slowed his truck to a crawl as he looked for the best place to park. With a little bit of effort he pulled in between a 1980something Mercedes Benz and a Volkswagen Rabbit of indeterminate age. He looked over the parking lot and thought it seemed light. It was a Saturday, and there should have been more visitors, but half the lot was empty. Additionally two cars pulled out and left just after he stopped the truck.

  Most importantly, there was a Smart car with Jolly Roger wraps parked in one corner under the shade of an oak tree. Interestingly enough there wasn’t an orange Ford Pinto about.

  Bubba shrugged. Even a social worker had to have some time off.

  He let Precious out of the truck to do some dogly business while he looked around. The nurses still chatted in the gazebo, and a lone gardener was clipping bushes with oversized shears. It seemed overly quiet for a place that usually had so much going on.

  Without ado, Precious went to work sniffing grass and bushes alike in a great quest to mark as much territory in the little amount of time she had been allotted. Bubba often thought that Precious had an extra bladder to be used strictly for the marking of territory and to be held on reserve for such momentous occasions. When she noticed her master was getting away, she peed a final time and trotted after him as he wound his way up to the main door. The door had a sign next to it and a little button that begged to be pushed. After he pushed it, the door chirped open without anyone asking what his business was or wasn’t.

  Once inside, Bubba found the large-sized foyer about the same as it had been the last time. The floors were marble. The seats were metal and bolted to the floors. The desk sat in the same place. Surprisingly, the same red-haired girl sat at it and smiled genially at Bubba.

  “Well, hi there, Bubba, isn’t it?” she asked. His gaze dropped down to the nametag on her breast at the same time he remembered the girl’s name was Cybil. It took him a moment to wonder if that was just ironic coincidence or the universe saying, “Gotcha,” to Bubba. He decided it was ironic coincidence.

  “Hey, Cybil,” Bubba said. “They don’t have you in the thrift shop no more?”

  “It’s closed two weekends a month, and we’re having some renovation done next week so everyone who could arrange it got to go to a big company retreat at South Padre Island.” Cybil smiled broadly. She was the type of girl who liked to smile. In fact, she was perpetually chipper. (Possibly she hadn’t yet found any dead bodies in her lifetime.)

  “You dint want to go to the beach?”

  “Sand gives me hives,” Cybil said, “and I get an extra two weeks off for working now. So I’m taking a month off to check off some items on my bucket list.” She pulled out a logbook and pushed it at him. “You know the rules, right?”

  “I sign in, no weapons, no fooling around, no causing drama,” Bubba listed. He signed the log with the flowered pen she provided and pushed both book and pen back at her. Then he pulled out his keys, a Buck pocketknife, a spinner shaped like a cricket, and two pieces of Doublemint gum. “There ya go.”

  “Well that’s just outstanding,” Cybil said brightly, clearly meaning every word. “We just love visitors, although we don’t get to see as many since half the people are gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “That renovation, silly,” she said. “The management’s been planning this for months. All the patients were trimmed due to attrition and then put in the southern wing, so they can work on the northern wing. They hope all the noise won’t bother the poor dears, but you can’t have a building falling down on you, can you?”

  “You cain’t or I cain’t?” Bubba asked, confused.

  “You know what I mean, daffy doodle,” Cybil chastised him. “The dayroom is the same as the last time you were here, if that was the last time. Goodness knows I might not have been here the last time you visited.”

  Bubba wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to Cybil. She might talk to him some more and then call him a Happy Henry or a Dorky Doris. She gave him a visitor’s badge and gently shooed him toward the double doors. “I’ll buzz you through,” she said. The doors made a sort of burping noise that made his stomach make a corresponding noise.

  “Most of them just finished the last therapy for the day,” Cybil called after him just before the doors shut, “so they’ll be in the dayroom hanging out. A lot of them will be leaving pretty soon, but I think Mr. Beathard is staying, so no problem. Or maybe you’re here to see Jesus.”

  Bubba didn’t answer as he passed through the door and wondered why Cybil hadn’t said anything about Precious. The dog kept to Bubba’s heel and glanced around with cautious eyes. The last time she’d been to a place like this she’d lost a bunch of time and woken up with a sore belly, so she was naturally suspicious. “Don’t worry,” he told her reassuringly, “they don’t do that sort of thing here.”

  Precious woofed softly. It sounded like canine contempt to Bubba.

  The dayroom wasn’t as full of patients as the previous time he’d been there. Three women dressed in hospital robes watched an old episode of Starsky and Hutch. Bubba couldn’t remember which was Starsky and which was Hutch, but he did recognize Huggy Bear. One patient cheered on Starsky. “Go Starsky!” she cried. “Show them how it’s done!” One of the other two women said plaintively, “I like Hutch better.”

  To Bubba’s disappointment there wasn’t a great reenactment of the crossing of the Delaware River by General Washington, but there was a courtroom drama going on in one corner. After watching for a minute, Bubba deduced it was a revisionist’s view of the Scopes Monkey Trial. A man dressed in a skunk costume was acting as Clarence Darrow and a woman with four sweaters was William
Jennings Bryant. Sadly, Bubba recognized the William Jennings Bryant individual as Thelda, a woman who tended to speak in Shakespearean insults and the object of Ruby Mercer’s pokerama-related derision.

  “Thy vain, shard-borne moldwarp!” she accused Clarence Darrow. Bubba took that to mean that she thought he was contemptible.

  “I object!” Clarence Darrow the skunk cried. His black and white tail bounced as he leapt to his feet.

  The judge said, “Motion dismissed!” and hit the chair he sat in with the heel of his shoe. Bubba supposed it was hard to find a gavel in the vicinity.

  The history buff inside Bubba wanted to watch, but what he really needed to do was to find David Beathard. He looked around for a pirate and saw nary a one, not even one that was vaguely like Johnny Depp. He looked for someone in purple and came up with zilch. Finally, he looked for Sherlock Holmes and not one deerstalker cap was to be located.

  A man in a striped seersucker suit wandered past him. The man muttered, “Mechanical oscillators and electrical discharge tubes need to be connected to the high-frequency, high-power mechanism.” Then a mad scientist laugh escaped his lips. “Bwahaha.”

  Bubba said, “Pardon me.”

  The man glanced at Bubba. “You don’t happen to have an induction motor on you, do you?” he asked, adjusting the double lapel of his jacket.

  “Ah, no,” Bubba said. He patted his shirt, then remembered he was wearing the same t-shirt he had put on for fishing. “Bun in the Oven” was still prominent, but it had no pockets for induction motors or any other kind of motors, for that matter. “You wouldn’t know David Beathard, would you?”

  “Is he related to Thomas Edison?” the man asked. He was about five feet ten inches tall and in his forties or fifties. Bubba didn’t think he’d seen him before, although he looked vaguely familiar. He had an impressive hawk nose and a terrible scar snaking down his left cheek. “He stole all of my patents, you know.”